The Nettleton School District in Jonesboro said it will spend $1 million during the next four years to provide its students with Apple laptops.
The program will start this fall for the approximately 900 students in sixth through eighth grades who will each receive Apple MacBook Air model laptops, said Superintendent James Dunivan. The cost for the district the first year will be $400,000. He said the district is considering adding the ninth-graders this fall, but nothing has been decided yet.
By the end of the four years, though, all students in grades three to 12 will be issued an Apple laptop that they can take home after school. The district has about 3,200 students.
Dunivan said the money for the program will come from the district’s general fund. Also as part of the program, teachers will be assigned Apple MacBook Pro models.
The district also is planning to spend about $200,000 to upgrade its wireless bandwidth during its spring break this year so students will have a faster Internet connection. “It’s pretty much going to change us from a two-lane highway to an interstate highway,” Dunivan said.
He said the school district decided to issue laptops because students are being taught differently than they were a decade ago. “The way learning is changing, we have to have this technology,” Dunivan said.
With the laptops, the students will be “a lot more engaged, a lot more energized and a lot more willing to pay attention,” he said. Dunivan said that he hopes the technology will result in higher tests scores too.
The key to the success of the curriculum will be the constant training throughout the year by Apple representatives to the teachers, Dunivan said.
He said Apple’s more than 70,000 educational applications was among the reasons the district chose Apple computers. The applications will help the teachers use the equipment effectively.
“Without all of that [training], none of this is worth anything,” Dunivan said. “Professional development is the biggest part of this.”
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